


Cutting Season

by Lily Saint Claire (JewLo)



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: Case Fic, F/M, Hotch/Reid established relationship, I Don't Even Know, I write weird shit, M/M, Non-Traditional Relationships, Original Female Character(s) - Freeform, Polyamory, Rossi/Reid established relationship, always evolving story, possibly kink, probably a lot of sex
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-10
Updated: 2015-10-16
Packaged: 2018-04-25 16:53:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4968775
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JewLo/pseuds/Lily%20Saint%20Claire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When five bodies are found in the sugar cane fields of a Louisiana plantation, the BAU investigates.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Oak

**Author's Note:**

> The established relationships in this series stem from my "Beautiful Minds" series, in which Hotch and Reid are romantically involved and Rossi is a sometimes bed partner to Reid (and Hotch is fine with that). 
> 
> I grew up in Louisiana and yes, it is really this weird.

Ascension Parish, Louisiana

The morning rain gave way to a low, sultry humidity that left a glistening sheen of dew on the lawn of Duquesne Plantation. The distant hum of a tractor cutting down sugar cane was just barely audible on the veranda where guests took their morning breakfast at wicker tables set with bouquets of flowers grown in the plantation hot houses. The earthy scent of fresh soil, azaleas and chicory coffee spiced the air. It was Lydia Sark’s sixteenth birthday, but no one would notice, except maybe Miss Lily, the innkeeper, who had always been kind to Lydia and gave her presents every birthday since Lydia’s mama worked at the plantation when Lydia was little. Lydia was in foster care now since mama passed on, but she didn’t mind much. She kept a quiet life. She got decent grades. She went to work at the guesthouse on weekends and made a little pocket money. She stayed away from boys. Too much trouble. Miss Lily tutored her in French and English Literature. 

Apparently, Miss Lily had been some kind of art teacher or something at a fancy college just for girls somewhere in France before she came back to Ascension Parish when her mama and daddy died. The plantation was her family’s home, passed down from generation to generation and Miss Lily had been left the whole thing in her parents will. Lydia didn’t think Miss Lily really wanted to come home from Europe. She seemed unhappy in Louisiana and Lydia didn’t blame her. It was hot and the crickets never shut up at night. Her parents had sent her off to school in France when she was Lydia’s age. Lydia thought that if it had been her, she wouldn’t have come back. She would have let one of Miss Lily’s brothers take over the place, but Miss Lily said her brothers had the combined intelligence of a single thumb tack, whatever that meant. Lydia did her work and kept quiet about the whole thing. 

On that morning, early in June, the crickets were still chirping and the sun had just come up. The guests were up early and Lydia brought out plates of omelets and pitchers of mimosas with little sprigs of mint in the glasses. Lace edged linen napkins with sterling silver napkin rings. Forks and knives made in the 1800’s with swirly patterns Miss Lily called ‘Florentine’ on them. Fine things. The things guests expected for $370 a night. Everything had to be perfect because the Duquesne Plantation Hotel had been on the cover of a fancy magazine and now all these hotel critics and bloggers were showing up and writing about the place so standards had to be high. Miss Lily had drawn out plans for a fancy addition to the house she called an Italianate solarium and the construction people were starting in a week, as soon as the ground was cleared out in the garden. 

Workers were out there, neatly out of the sight of guests, digging up soil to pour the foundation. The gardener, Mr. Jesseps and his crew of sons and nephews had cleared out all the bramble and blackberry bushes. His oldest son, Shirlow was in charge of the project. Shirlow had been a football player for LSU before he was kicked off the team for getting into a fight with a referee. Lydia remembered seeing it on TV and people being really embarrassed about the whole thing. Now he mowed lawns and tended to handyman work. Anyway, Shirlow, or ‘Shirley’ as people called him, had run off with some girl a few days ago and Miss Lily said if he showed up for work late again she would fire his ass no matter what Mr. Jesseps said. So Lydia figured Shirley was probably fired. Lydia saw Miss Lily go out on the veranda, taking a huge silver platter of sliced fruit to the guests. She smiled at Lydia and stopped to whisper,

“Happy birthday, sugar! Stick around after work and I have a gift for you.”

Lydia grinned. Miss Lily’s presents were always good. Expensive things Lydia could never afford on her own. Lydia’s foster mother, Maureen didn’t like Lily Duquesne much and said she ‘put on airs’ and that she wasn’t rich like her mama and daddy had been. The family was in debt and Miss Lily had to come back from Europe and turn the house into a hotel to be able to keep it from going into foreclosure. Maureen said Lily Duquesne was nothing but a trumped up hotel clerk in $500 shoes. Lydia figured if you wore $500 shoes and lived in a big ‘ole plantation house and drove a pretty convertible car and had fancy clothes from France, you were just about as rich as rich could get and it didn’t matter much what Maureen thought because Maureen didn’t really like anybody and wasn’t nice to Lydia at all. Miss Lily was pretty nice to everyone except when she had to stomp her feet every once in a while to keep the gardener’s boys in line. But they were all trouble makers anyway and did nothing but party and drink too much. The cook, Mrs. Steyer said she ought to fire all of ‘em but Mr. Jesseps had been ‘in the family’ for twenty five years and if she fired his boys he’d feel obligated as a matter of honor to leave too. 

“Lydia, sugar, I’m gonna take a tray of lemonade out to the workers. Can you make sure the guests stay happy for a few minutes?”

“Sure. Glad to.”

And she watched Miss Lily saunter away with a tray of plastic cups and a pitcher of lemonade toward the garden. Lydia filled coffee cups and answered questions about the plantation’s history. Yes, it had been built in 1834 by a wealthy creole textile merchant. Yes, it was one of the oldest houses and most well preserved houses in the state of Louisiana. Yes, Miss Duquesne was a direct descendant of Thierry Duquesne, the French merchant who built the plantation long ago. Yes, the painting in the parlor was of her great-great-great (how many greats?) grandmother Marie and yeah they did look a little bit alike. And… what was that noise?

Lydia turned to the direction of the sound. Men yelling and carrying on. Something had happened. She saw Mr. Jesseps run out with his hands up as if he was running from the cops. His nephews ran out shortly after, cringing and carrying on as if they’d seen a ghost. Miss Lily came out behind them, still carrying a tray of lemonade, but her face was white, or at least more pale than usual and she was shaking just a little.

“What’s going on?” Lydia asked, her voice low so the guests wouldn’t hear. 

She thought maybe they had seen a snake out in the garden, but those boys wouldn’t carry on like that about a snake unless it was a cottonmouth like the one that fell out of a tree last summer. That sucker had been near on twelve feet long and Miss Lily had gone out and killed it with a shotgun because Mr. Jesseps and his boys said they weren’t going anywhere near the beast. That had surprised the boys, Miss Lily in those $500 shoes, a flowery sun dress and a Winchester shotgun her daddy left in the house. But she had put a bullet right in that thing’s head and then threw it in the river. Apparently her daddy had taught her how to shoot before she went to Europe, but that was long before Lydia’s time. But Miss Lily was standing there now, as whitefaced as the day that cottonmouth fell out of the tree and she dropped the cups of lemonade by her feet. She looked up and said,

“Shirley’s dead. And he’s starting to stink.”

###

The BAU’s on-loan fleet of Denali SUVs -three in a row- barreled down the old Plantation Road, edging the Mississippi River. David Rossi curled his nose up at the smell. Sulfur plants and industrial waste stations pock marked the road, sending belches of rotten egg scented fumes into the air. The drive from New Orleans had been two hours along a stretch of country road that passed shack-towns riddled with clapboard houses of peeling paint and hand drawn signs advertising ‘Po’Boys’ and ‘Alligator Pie’ which David had not previously known was a thing. The area was poor, and the squalid conditions were obvious, the remnants of a dark era in the past. The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina had flooded much of the riverside and the area was just barely hanging on. David glanced at Spencer Reid in the front seat of the car when Reid’s cell rang. It was Hotch. 

“It’s the next turn off on the road. He says to look for the big green sign.”

David turned onto another road and was grateful to enter a little village of a town (tiny, maybe 50 people?) that did not smell like a nightmare. He rolled his window down and smelled the fresh scent of turned soil, sugar cane and flowers. The tiny little hamlet was made up of neat little clapboard houses, freshly painted and roofed, each one with brightly painted doors.

“Those are called ‘shotgun cottages’ because they are all one long narrow set of rooms. If you shoot a shotgun from the front door, the bullet will go through every room and go out the back. So, y’know, shotgun cottages,” Reid said in his usual factual tone. 

It was a neat little place, with window boxes planted with pink flowers and kids toys littered on postage stamp front lawns. A quarter of a mile past the little hamlet called Rocherte, the country road opened up to a massive wide avenue flanked by enormous oak trees, their reaching limbs stretching over the avenue and dripping Spanish moss. At the end of the avenue was a looming plantation house, imposing with its columns and bright green shutters. 

“Five people dead,” Reid said, looking out the window at the grand house. “The latest one went missing four days ago. He had a history of disappearing for days at a time so everyone assumed he was just out getting drunk. Some gardeners found him in a grave at the back of the property. Local police found the other four in the sugarcane fields this morning. A teenage girl named Lydia Sark found the latest victim…”

David parked the car at the gate and watched Reid fidget a moment, twisting his wedding ring around so that the little ruby gem was no longer outward, like an eye that could witness all the darkness. Hotch did the same with his and David had always noticed that little ritual of theirs, even though the rest of the team didn’t seem to. They had been married a year. David felt lonely every time he looked at the two of them together. Marriage had never worked out for David Rossi. He had his casual sex with Spencer Reid, all neat and cleared with Hotch. Occasional weekends of mind blowing sex with the young man, but Spencer would never be his, never be a permanent thing in his life. Spencer was with Aaron Hotchner and Hotch was as protective of the young man as a ferocious lion. Hotch and Reid had a sexually open relationship, but it remained closed for anything long term. David saw Reid quickly switch into case-mode. His eternally youthful face more serious. His eyes shifting and darting in every direction, taking every sight in. 

A parish sheriff clearly in way over his head tipped his hat in the blazing sunshine as David approached with Reid and JJ in tow. Morgan and Prentiss were with Hotch not far behind. The sheriff shook David’s hand, his palm sweltering in the heat. Sound of toads nearby, croaking under the hedges. Sheriff Alan Dowd had come in from Vierre, the biggest town nearby which was not big at all. 

“Mighty glad you folks are here,” Dowd said, and wiped his sweat slick brow. “I ‘aint never seen nothin’ like this in all my life. To be straight up with you, my little unit ‘aint equipped to handle somethin’ like this.”

“We can take it from here, Sheriff. I’m Special Agent David Rossi, this is Agent Jennifer Jerreau and Dr. Spencer Reid.”

“Doctor, huh? You look awful young to be a doctor.”

“He’s a genius,” JJ said flatly.

“Well, we need a genius, ‘cuz this is downright weird. Y’all follow me and I’ll take you to the grave.”

They examined the grave in the garden, upturned soil revealing the shining and slithering brown tangles of earthworms just beneath the surface. The body had been removed and taken to the morgue but there were artifacts left at the scene. Twisted pieces of chicken wire and torn bits of fabric. Four women and one man. 

“He must have gotten in the way,” David heard the silky voice of Aaron Hotchner move up close beside him. “He doesn’t fit the victimology. The other victims were all women, ages thirty-five to forty, all caucasian, dark hair, very particular body type… killing an African American man in his twenties is out of line. The victim might have caught him in the act.”

“The plantation house operates as a hotel,” JJ said. “A couple of the guests trampled through here on a curiosity trip. We’ll need to take shoe prints and start ruling out guests. The innkeeper is with Morgan right now.”

David walked around the hedges of the garden path and looked out at the plantation house. He didn’t need to look to know Reid was right behind him. He could hear the squeak of Reid’s Converse shoes on the garden stones.

“David,” Reid said, clicking his outdated cell phone shut. “I just got off the phone with the medical examiner. Each of the bodies, except the African American male was dumped in the sugar cane fields within the last week, but none of them was killed in that location. Tox report shows they had high levels of dopamine in their systems, likely drugged by the unsub. All had been sexually assaulted and… their body organs are missing.”

“Which ones?” David asked, staring at the veranda where the figure of a dark haired woman stood on the stairs staring out at him in return.

Reid hesitated and then shoved his phone back in his pocket.

“All of them.”


	2. Iron

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A storm is moving in on Duquesne Plantation and a series of grisly murders hangs over everyone's heads.

The rush in the beginning of any case always made David’s head spin, though he would and could never admit that to anyone. It carried him off in some way, an out of body experience. The rush to catch a killer before he or she could kill again took priority over his very own breath. The result was an intoxicated feeling that made him shake, which was why he often wrung his hands together in an effort to turn his nervousness into a gesture of power. 

“The innkeeper,” Reid said, standing next to him and gesturing to the woman on the grand veranda of the plantation house. “Lily Duquesne.”

“As in the family that built this place?”

“Yes. I had Garcia do some research. Apparently she is the only legitimate daughter of Franklin and Mariel Duquesne. She has two brothers, both born from women NOT Franklin Duquesne’s wife. In 1998, Franklin and Mariel Duquesne were killed in a car accident in New Orleans. In their will, they left the plantation to their daughter, who was twenty at the time and tucked away in a very expensive women’s college in Ville Fache, France. According to Garcia’s findings, Lily Duquesne refused to return to Louisiana for several years, leaving the plantation to her two brothers and the two of them ran the place into the ground. Tax reports show that the place was heavily in debt until two years ago when a lot of that debt was paid off by an anonymous donor interested in the preservation of the plantation for a historical society.”

“How much did this anonymous donor give?”

“A half a million.”

“Pretty generous donation for an anonymous donor,” David glanced at the veranda again and saw the distant figure of the woman moving closer. “Hey Reid, have Garcia run more backgrounds on the brothers. I don’t know what the hell’s going on here but this wasn’t an out of control psychopath. These bodies were surgically cut. I don’t think we’re looking at a drunk farm boy here.”

“I’ll call Garcia and interview the gardening crew. Aaron… Hotch is already over there.”

David did not reply. He did not need to. Reid would do his job and didn’t need validation. David stuck his hands in his pockets and waited for the woman to get closer. It was a long walk and he wanted to study her a moment. She might know something. Five dead bodies on her property… she most likely knew something. David always thought of innkeepers as little old ladies in aprons and silvery buns in their hair. He wasn’t sure where he got that idea from, maybe a few too many BBC mystery shows with one of the ex-wives in which innkeepers were always that little old lady. Well, Lily Duquesne was nothing like that at all. She was somewhere between thirty-five and forty (Reid told him later she was thirty-seven), with moon-pale skin, a scattering of freckles under her startlingly blue eyes that were almost frighteningly too large for her face. Cupid’s bowed lips, soft face, the babyish look of a snub nose that would make her look twenty until she was fifty… kind of like Reid. Her hair was a long rope of dark brown, almost black and kept in a thick french braid hanging over one shoulder. A little old fashioned. The stark contrast of pale skin, black hair and the unnerving blue of her eyes was stunning. But she was not the gaunt, sleek beauty found in fashion magazines. She was a little plump, a little more like Penelope Garcia who David had secretly checked out more than a few times. This woman was a little more hourglass in shape and the neatly fitted sun dress showed off a figure that was what old Italian men sometimes called a “tomato” - the kind of ripe fruit you wanted to squeeze. The lush figure seen on women in the 1950’s. Gorgeous, really. David caught himself staring at the same time she caught him staring at her cleavage. She did not look bothered. In fact, she smiled at him and the smile was slightly unnerving. Fearless look right in his eyes. Yes, I see what you’re looking at.

“Special Agent David Rossi?” she asked, lilting Southern accent, touched with a little French. “I was told I needed to come and speak with you.”

“Lily Duquesne,” he said her name and saw one of her eyebrows raise.

“It’s pronounced doo-cane, Agent Rossi. It’s an old French Acadian name. And yours is… Sicilian, I presume? Palermo?”

“Exactly, Ms. Duquesne. I have a few questions for you…”

“I assumed as much, Agent Rossi. Why don’t we retreat to some place out of the sun. It’s blistering out here.”

She did not wait for a response, but turned and started toward a side gate of wrought iron with a scrolling pattern and three ears of wrought iron corn topping the gate. A stone walkway edged by carefully planted flowers led to a large covered building with french windows surrounding a swimming pool. Several white wicker lounge chairs were scattered around the pool and Lily Duquesne gestured for David to have a seat.

“It’s quiet here,” she said. “I would be most appreciative if we didn’t scare the hell out of the guests. I’ve asked that they depart by nightfall due to circumstances.”

“We might need them to stay, actually.”

“Oh, well, you’ll have to deal with that yourself then, Agent Rossi.”

“Ms. Duquesne, did you know the female victims personally? Sabina Bouyerre? Pauline Tucker? Nadie Ryan? Jaqueline Cates?”

“Well, Sabina worked here for one Summer a few years ago, and Nadie Ryan stayed a couple of weekends with a boyfriend. She won a two weekend free stay from a magazine giveaway we did.”

“And the other two?”

“I didn’t know them personally, no. But they had daughters who worked here sometimes. I have summer jobs for teenagers and all of those women had daughters who had worked here at some point. But, Agent Rossi, I should explain, this hotel is the primary employer of the area and almost everyone who lives nearby has worked here at some point in time. Teenagers come in to work for the Summer when school is out. Their parents take jobs with us when the big companies in Shreveport lay them off. There is a high turnover, Agent Rossi.”

“Do you do background checks on all of your employees, Ms. Duquesne?”

“Yes, I do. I don’t employ anyone with a violent criminal record or a record of theft. Around here, that leaves rather slim pickings. You’re in the deep South, Agent Rossi. Things are rough here, despite the look of this place.”

“Where are your brothers, Ms. Duquesne?”

“Well, Andre was up from New Orleans for the weekend but he left late last night, and Flynn is partying his life away at a frat party at Ole Miss.”

“Your brother left right before a body is found in your garden is found? Don’t you find that strange?”

“Not particularly, Agent Rossi?”

“Hmph. How do you figure?”

“Well, he has to get to work in the morning so it makes sense that he would leave. Besides, Andre picked out the spot for the solarium. I hardly think he would use a place he chose to break ground on as a dumping ground.”

“Are you and your brothers close?” he asked.

“Not at all, Agent Rossi. My brothers are useless airheads. They ran this place into the ground. We would have lost everything. All they did was party. They brought hordes of girls up here, snorted their weight in blow and sold off half of the furniture at auction. Even my mother’s wedding ring… it had been in five generations of my family, they sold it for half of what it was worth, and hen spent the money on a sailboat they float out at Lake Pontchartrain. No, Agent Rossi, my brothers and I have never been close. But I do what I can to keep this place in the black and Andre is an architect so I asked his opinion on where the solarium should go. He gave a little help. We are civil when it comes to money now. That means I let them have their monthly allotment if they stay out of the way and don’t dig into the bank accounts.”

“What does your brother Flynn study?”

“He’s a medical student.”

David felt a cold chill and the tingling feeling of a hunch growing in his stomach.

“When was the last time he was here, Miss Duquesne?”

“Last week.”

“And where does he stay when he visits?”

“They both have rooms here. Flynn’s is on the second floor gallery.”

“I’m going to need to see that room, Ms. Duquesne.”

She nodded, and her head lowered. She looked up at him through thick black lashes and gave a little smile. He reminded himself not to stare.

“Agent Rossi, I know what you’re thinking, but even though my brother might be a useless little shit, I don’t think he’s capable of hurting a fly. Hell, he can barely find his ass with both hands.”

“We’ll see about that, Ms. Duquesne.”

###

 

The TV in the staff break room was on mute but Lily grabbed the remote and turned up the volume when she saw the weatherman point to a swirling mass on the map of the southern states. Hurricane Louise had been aimed north just hours ago, cutting across Cuba and Hispaniola. It would have just barely skirted the Gulf Coast and spared the Southern states, but now the storm had shifted and was heading straight for the Alabama-Louisiana coastline. 

“If that ‘cane hits,” Mrs. Steyer the cook said, wiping her hands on her apron. “We’ll have a flood on our hands.”

“I’m going down to the village to get everyone over here. Those houses aren’t safe and everyone will be a lot safer here.”

“Those feds won’t like you leaving, you know.”

“That storm’s on its way and it doesn’t matter much what they think right now.”

“They’ll have to stay too. They’ll be a big ‘ole pain in the ass.”

“Mrs. Steyer, would you be so kind as to get Lydia to help you and get some rooms ready. Gather up anyone on staff and start taping up the windows. We don’t need glass shatter everywhere and I’m not sure I can afford to have the windows fixed anyway.”

“Sure thing. I wouldn’t take that zippy little car of yours though. If that rain kicks up while you’re out there, that ‘lil ole thing’ll fly right off the road. If I was you, I’d get one of them feds to go out there with you. They’ve got big ole SUVs.”

“I don’t think the feds are going to cooperate with me.”

“Honey, that storm’s coming in fast, so they’ll have to.”


	3. Moss

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A hurricane blows into Ascension Parish, Louisiana and the team must put aside their search for a killer to prepare for the coming storm. David Rossi gets closer to the plantation's mysterious proprietress.

Shadowy clouds swirled overhead and the wind began to blow the scattered palms until they were bending at the middle. Rain swept in and skated across the road, leaving mass puddles three feet deep in its wake. David had begun the drive toward the village with Lily Duquesne in the passenger seat, but she insisted on taking over the driving after he banked them into three different puddles on the pot hole covered road. She knew the terrain, she told him, and his ‘yankee driving’ would get them killed. She navigated the Denali through the roads like an off road vehicle and punched the accelerator through the rainswept terrain. 

“They’re stubborn,” she said. “People in the village, they don’t want to leave what little they have. They always refuse to go to safer ground. Sometimes I’ve been able to talk some sense into a few of them.”

“They go to the plantation when a storm hits?”

“Some do. I put them up at the hotel until the storm passes. Give them some supplies to take home after.” 

David hung on for life as she full throttled her way through Louisiana backroads with alarming confidence. He turned his head quickly when she caught him in the rear view mirror taking a long look at her cleavage in that sundress. He saw her smile in the mirror.

“Havin’ a look, Agent Rossi?”

“It’s a nice view.”

The neat little clapboard houses rattled in the wind and rain. Their residents rushed around, gathering laundry off of hanging twine and pulling children’s toys into the house. A woman snatched up a small child and tugged her into a house where several other children peeked out from a rattling window. 

“Mae?” Lily shouted toward a rattling cottage. “Mae Alice Jackson, come on out now! You know you and your daddy can’t stay ‘round here through the storm!”

David saw the cottage door open and a gray haired man in a wheelchair wheeled himself out onto the porch, holding a shotgun.

“Mae’s inside with the kids,” he said, his cajun accent barely understandable. “And we ‘aint join’ nowheres.”

“Mr. Jackson, please be reasonable. There is nothing you can do to protect that house if this storm kicks up to a level three and the news man says it’s gonna be level four.”

“I was born in this house and I ‘aint letting no storm take it down.”

“And what are you gonna do? Hmm? Shoot it? You old fool, it’s not THAT the wind is blowing, it’s WHAT the wind is blowing! Now be sensible and send Mae out here. You can stay if you want to, but let Mae and those children come up to the plantation house where its safe!”

“This is MY house and them’s MY grandkids…!”

David saw her steadily march up the little porch steps and press her stomach right against the barrel of Mr. Jackson’s shotgun, hands on her hips, defiant and fearless.

“I will remind you, Mr. Jackson, this is NOT your house. This is my property and I let you live on it. Now, send Mae out here with those kids or IF there happens to still be a house after this hurricane whips through here, I will make sure you are out on your ass for good. Send out Mae and the kids and I will make sure they stay safe and after the storm, I will repair any damages… like I always do.”

Mr. Jackson looked at the barrel of his gun, denting into cotton-linen printed in lace edged floral and looked disturbed. He slowly set the shotgun down and relented, waving her off in a dismissive gesture.

“Mae, honey, come on out now!” Lily yelled over the wind.

A moment later, a woman with a perfect complexion of caramel skin and hair that was plaited into two thick braids tiptoed out of the house with a small child in each arm. Behind her, three more children, all under the age of ten followed. One of them walked with a bowed gait, the little girl’s sloe eyes indicating she might have Downs Syndrome. The woman struggled to rush the children out to the SUV and David sprinted forward to help her. Around him, people rushed around with bags of their precious belongings and loaded them into old cars, people piling in on top of each other. 

“Y’all drive right up to the plantation house. We have the gate open. Just drive in and go right in. We’ll make up rooms for all of you. If you’ve got sleeping bags, bring em…” Lily was yelling and helping people load bags into an old station wagon. “Mr. Jackson, you’re still welcome to come with us. We’ll make room for you.”

The old man stared at her a long while and then gave her the dismissive gesture again.

“Suit yourself then,” she said with finality. 

The children climbed into the back seat of the SUV with their mother, piling on each other’s laps. David held one of the children in his lap in the front, a three year old who looked terrified. David was terrified himself but struggled to keep his cool. He had never experienced a hurricane. Soon, Lily was barreling the SUV down the road again, this time with a caravan of cars behind her. At the plantation house, everyone rushed inside and David gave the child to Mae. The investigation of the murders was forgotten for the time being and the only focus was getting through the impending storm. David passed Prentiss and JJ spreading thick tape across the windows in case the windows broke, the glass would not shatter. He saw Morgan and Aaron piling sandbags against the outer perimeter of the house. 

“Agent Rossi, you and your people can take rooms on the second floor to the left, the rooms with green doors. I’m afraid you and your team won’t be getting out of Ascension Parish for the next couple of days.”

And most of the crime scene will be destroyed by the storm, David thought with a taste of acid in his throat. Quickly, he rushed to help the sandbagging team and tried not to think of how badly the storm would damage any chance of catching the sick bastard. Hotel guests cowered in the old French parlor upstairs, gathered around white linen clad tables sipping Scotch and wine from the plantation house cellars. Most of the guests were what Lily Duquesne referred to as ‘upstart Yankee gate hoppers’ which David guessed meant Northerners, and most of them were pretty much useless in an emergency. 

“I gave them some Scotch to keep them quiet and out of the way,” Lily said, brushing past David and carrying a load of blankets and sleeping bags for the people coming in from the village. 

The electricity went out. A giant oak tree bent and swayed in the wind. The children were bedded down in sleeping bags in the staff quarters common room, the safest room in the house. Lily made them all sandwiches and glasses of lemonade and smiled when she took stacks of coloring books and crayons up for them to play with. The woman named Mae held her five children close and cried, mumbling about her father being in a wheelchair and still in that rickety clapboard house. 

“Mae, if he won’t come up here, there’s nothin’ I can do for him. I am sorry,” Lily folded her hands over her knees and sat with Mae a while, before it seemed there was no more she could do and she gave a nod of resignation before following David out of the room. 

“Do you think he’ll survive?” David asked her in a whisper.

“No, Agent Rossi. I do not. I’ve got the transistor on in the study upstairs and the weather report says it’s growing fast and not slowing down. Category four, headed right for us. Nobody thought it was coming this way. That’s the way it is down here, you know. One minute, it’s tea and honeysuckle, the next it’s God’s wicked eye in the storm and we’re all right in its path.”

“God’s eye?” David raised an eyebrow and tried not to glance at her cleavage again. “Do you believe in God, Miss Duquesne?”

She smiled and took her time, brushing flecks of wet leaves off of the smooth cotton of her dress.

“Well, Agent Rossi, I don’t know about that, but… he believes in me.”

David nodded and caught her coy smile. 

“What can I do to help?”

“Nothin’ much any of us can do now,” she said. “But I’ve got a bottle of cognac and a transistor radio, Agent Rossi. Care to keep me company?”

It was something about the look in her eyes that did him in. Women like her had always been his weakness. The lush, soft, wicked-sweet about her. The way she tilted her head down and looked up through long black lashes. A quick fantasy of her soft breasts crushed against him and then he batted the fantasy out of his head. Don’t be stupid, he told himself. This woman is the sister of a prime suspect in a murder investigation. She has a killing field in her back yard. She might be a suspect herself. 

“I regret that I have to take my leave now, Miss Duquesne.”

“Ah, well. Not a man easily swayed by temptation then?” Soft, lilting accent, a French tinged Southern belle.

She didn’t bother to play games apparently. He looked her over again. He took his time. She let him look. She even put her hands on her hips and tilted her head to the side, giving him the full view. Despite the storm blown hair, the bits of wet leaves clinging to her dress, her skin and her hair, the smudge of dirt on her cheek, she was gorgeous. 

“Goodnight, Miss Duquesne.”

“Goodnight, Agent Rossi.”


End file.
